To The Stars

“I’m flying, Jack!” is a reference so old, it’s apparently coming back in style—and from Leonardo DiCaprio himself. For the second year in a row, the star of Titanic and The Wolf of Wall Street and every teen girl’s bedroom in the 90s has auctioned off a dream date to space. At the annual amfAR auction at Cannes, to benefit AIDS research, the DiCaprio space trip sold for nearly $1 million, according to Variety. That’s actually a downgrade—last year, three seats on the same 2015 DiCaprio flight sold for a combined $3.8 million.

What’s with the low bids, 2014 auction attendees? This could be you in real life.

Not to even mention that one of the very few other celebrities currently slated for a trip to space with Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic is . . . Kate Winslet. There’s no word on whether she and DiCaprio will actually be on the same flight, but given that he gave her away at her wedding to Branson’s nephew, shouldn’t they be? This is basically the opportunity to live out the sequel to Titanic that James Cameron will never make. (It’s kind of surprising, now that we think of it, that Cameron hasn’t also booked a trip to space. Is he waiting so he can go on his own and set some kind of record?)

For all the buzz around Virgin Galactic in the last few years, the private space-travel company has yet to ship any actual celebrities into space; the first flight has been scheduled for 2014, and will be broadcast on NBC, but no official launch date has been set. Eventually space travel will become one of those things, like auctions at Cannes, that are limited to celebrities and Russian billionaires and only reminds you of how powerless you are in the scheme of things. But for now, it gleams with potential and Titanic jokes. Enjoy this golden period while it lasts.